Jimmy Swaggart

Jimmy Lee Swaggart (15 March 1935-) was an American Pentecostal evangelist who was famously defrocked by the Assemblies of God in 1988 after confessing to having sexual relations with a prostitute.

Biography
Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born in Ferriday, Louisiana on 15 March 1935, the cousin of rock and roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis. He and his parents attended a 25-member Assemblies of God church in Ferriday during his youth, and he married a 15-year-old girl at the age of 17 in 1952. He and his family lived in poverty during the 1950s as he evangelized in southern Louisiana, and he preached from a donated flatbed trailer. In 1960, he began recording gospel music albums and transmitted on Christian radio stations. In 1961, he was ordained by the Assemblies of God, and he began his radio ministry a year later. In the late 1960s, he founded the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, and his church eventually became district-affiliated with the Assemblies of God. In the late 1960s, he purchased the WLUX radio station and broadcast Christian feature stories, preaching and teaching to various fundamentalist and Pentecostal denominations with black and Southern gospel and inspirational music. During the 1980s and 1990s, he sold his radio stations as he grew in popularity on television, starting hour-long weekly telecasts in 1978. In 1980, he founded a daily weekly telecast featuring Bible study and music, and, by 1983, his telecast was featured on 250 stations. In 1988, he was caught up in controversy when he confessed to having sex with a prostitute, and he was defrocked by the Assembly. He temporarily stepped downas the head of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, but he came to own the SonLife Broadcasting Network and continued his televangelism efforts.